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Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Argonne research aims to improve nuclear fuel recycling and metal recovery
Servis
Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are investigating a used nuclear fuel recycling technology that could lead to a scaled-down and more efficient approach to metal recovery, according to a recent news article from the lab. The research, led by Argonne radiochemist Anna Servis with funding from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), could have an impact beyond the nuclear fuel cycle and improve other high-value metal processing, such as rare earth recovery, according to Argonne.
The research: Servis’s work is being carried out under ARPA-E’s CURIE (Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy) program. The specific project—Radioisotope Capture Intensification Using Rotating Packed Bed Contactors—started in 2023 and is scheduled to end in January 2026.
H. B. Xu, G. L. Zhu, Z. Cao, Y. B. Dong, Y. K. Zhong, X. Cai, L. Liu, Y. G. Li, Z. C. Yang, J. Wang, P. Lu, D. Q. Liu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 7 | October 2020 | Pages 857-860
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1817703
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A shattered pellet injector based on in situ technology was installed on the HL-2A tokamak, and preliminary experiments were performed recently. In this paper, a fast current shutdown experiment introduces shattered pellet injection (SPI). In comparison with spontaneous disruptions and massive gas injection, SPI has advantages for disruption mitigation. The experimental results show the hard-X-ray radiation intensity (40 to 60 keV) rapidly falling from 20 to 0 when SPI is used. From this, we can infer that runaway electrons are suppressed. This observation indicates that SPI should be a good candidate for current fast shutdown in the future.